Visual and Multimodal Research in Organization and Management Studies

11The Power of Diagrams

Diagrams play an increasingly important role in organization and management practices. Flowcharts represent and manage work processes and procedures, including decision-making processes, organization charts represent and enact organizational structures and lines of command, and mission statements and strategies may take the form of ‘balanced scorecards’ and ‘strategy maps’ (Ledin & Machin, 2016). Timelines organize and integrate understandings of temporality (Yakura, 2002). Such diagrams not only represent structures, processes, strategies and visions, but they also institutionalize and regulate them. They create a specific ‘layer’ of organizational reality that becomes performative and impacts perception, thinking, and ...